BURUNDI: People’s Health Affected by Food Shortages – WFP Warns

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 16 1997 (IPS) - Tens of thousands of Burundians, living in camps inside the country, do not have access to adequate basic food sources to stave off malnutrition and life-threatening diseases, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.

In a statement faxed to IPS on Friday, WFP said that teams assessing regroupment and displaced persons camps, have reported that kwashiorkor, marasmus and oedema — clinical signs of malnutrition which have noticeable, physical traits such as skin ulcers, swelling of the feet and lightness in hair colour — have become prevalent over the last few months.

“In many camps, people have had restricted access to their land and crops, and are now becoming more reliant on WFP food aid hand-outs,” said Benoit Thiry, WFP Head of Programming in Burundi.

“In some cases, the people have been in camps for so long they’ve missed two or three harvests. As a result, nutritional problems are on the rise,” Thiry added.

An estimated 600,000 Burundians live away from their homes in some 250 camp settlements throughout the country. More than half of them are living in “regroupment” camps, which the Burundian government refers to as “protected settlements”.

The other 300,000 are displaced persons, who were either driven into camps due to fighting in their villages or have recently returned to Burundi from refugee camps due to insecurity, and cannot return to their homes.

Luc Rukingama, Burundi’s Minister of External Relations and Co- operation, told journalists here on Friday that the displaced were chased away from their homes by rebels.

“The government has played no role in their displacement. What we have been doing is to offer them transport facilities and move them to protected settlements,” he said.

Rukingama accused the aid agencies operating in Burundi of distributing food only to a “selected” group of displaced persons. He did not elaborate.

The majority of the displaced belong to the Hutu ethnic group, who account for an estimated 85 percent of Burundi’s 5.6 million people.

Their plight was triggered by the assassination of Burundi’s first Hutu President, Melchior Ndadaye, in a failed army coup by renegade Tutsis elements against his Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) government in 1993. About 150,000 people have died in ethnic conflict since then.

The Tutsi, who control the country’s political and military institutions, make up 14 percent of Burundi’s population.

And, since 1993, the Tutsi-dominated army has been battling with a number of Hutu rebel groups, chief among them the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD) in Burundi.

In its statement, WFP says recent food security assessments by its staff camps in seven provinces have indicated that the hardest- hit populations are living in regroupment camps.

These ad-hoc camps are often in remote areas where people have limited access to their land, thus placing severe constraints on their families’ food supplies. Many camps also have inadequate sources of clean water, poor sanitation facilities and little medical assistance.

Painting a grimy picture, WFP says mulnutrition rates are believed to be most acute in the provinces of Karuzi, Babanza and Kayanza.

“In the highly-insecure province of Bubunza, hundreds of people have been streaming into clinics in search of medical assistance and nutritional support after spending months in the forest. Some are so weak from malnourishment, they can barely stand. Thousands more are believed still to be in hiding,” it says.

The UN body also disclosed that medical non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating nutritional feeding centres in these three provinces, have requested larger amounts of food supplies from WFP in order to cope with the growing number of people who show up each day at their clinics. The NGOs are conducting wider nutritional surveys to determine the magnitude of the problem.

In the northern province of Karuzi, where the first regroupment camp opened in February 1996, more than 100,000 people are now living in camps with limited access to food. WFP says its assessment teams have found that many of the camps’ residents consume only 1,200 kilocalories a day, almost 40 percent less than the recommended UN minimum food ration of 1,900 kilocalories.

In displaced and regroupment camps across the country, WFP says its staff are finding that many people are not eating any fresh vegetables, meat or milk products, because they cannot produce or afford to purchase them. Instead people are resorting to filling their stomachs with cheaper and more readily available tubers — carbohydrates that temporarily alleviate hunger, but lack greatly- needed protein and vitamins.

“What we are seeing is prolonged undernutrition, which is slowly eroding the health of thousands of people,” Thiry said.

“This is not a population at the point of starvation, but generations of people could end up permanently blind, stunted mentally or, in extreme cases, dying of treatable diseases.”

As a result, WFP says it has doubled its food aid assistance for the next five months, providing 21,000 metric tonnes of food to 280,000 of the most vulnerable of the displaced and regrouped persons. WFP says it hopes that the improved security conditions witnessed in some provinces of Burundi over the last few months will prevail in order to facilitate the delivery and distribution of the needed food aid.

Given the deteriorating nutritional situation and since the next major harvest is not due until December, WFP says it will also begin managing the food pipeline for all feeding programmes on behalf of the humanitarian community to ensure that adequate amounts of nutritional foods are reaching those most in need.

Rukingama said the government of Major Pierre Buyoya was committed to resolving the conflict in Burundi so that the displaced could return home to their villages.

The latest round of peace talks between Burundi’s belligerents will to take place in Arusha, Tanzania, on Aug. 25. “We shall send a high level government delegation to the talks,” said Rukingama.